Tim Weaver - Vanished

She looked at me for a long time, eyes not moving.

‘I know it’s your life,’ she said. ‘You’ve told me that over and over. This is who you are. This is what you do. I get it. But remember something: this is my life now too.’

I didn’t go after her. Instead, I switched on the computer and tried to concentrate on something else, watching back the footage Tasker had sent me of the day Sam went missing. It felt like I’d seen it a thousand times now, like I knew every second of it intimately: the way Sam moved, his path in, the crowds around him, the platform. But now, thanks to Task, I had the walkways, escalators and ticket halls too. Except Sam never used any of them. Because he never even used the platform.

Once he was on the train, he never got off.

I returned to the footage of the carriage itself, letting it run from Gloucester Road. When the train got to Westminster, it was like looking at a family photo; a snapshot of a scene I knew every inch of. The people coming off the train and those left on it: the clumps of protesters; the woman with her headphones on, oblivious to what was happening; the two men, one – in a suit – seated and reading, the other – a demonstrator in a red shirt with checked sleeves – picking up a sign and shuffling towards the doors. As I inched it on further, watching the same people take the same routes out, my phone started going. I flipped it over and hit Speakerphone. ‘David Raker.’

‘It’s me,’ came a whisper.

‘Healy?’

‘You ever heard Wren talk?’ he said, bypassing a greeting, the line absolutely silent, as if he’d locked himself away somewhere. ‘I mean, actually talk .’

‘You mean like on video or something?’

‘Right.’

‘No, I haven’t.’

‘Yeah, well, I have. I spent an hour watching a home movie of him at the station.’

‘And?’

‘And the message he left on Drake’s mobile …’

I looked down at the phone. ‘What, it’s not him?’

‘No, it’s definitely him,’ he said, and then stopped. He sounded hesitant, unsure of himself. ‘Look, I haven’t forgotten what you did for me last year.’

He took me so much by surprise it was a couple of seconds before I caught up: he was talking about what I’d said earlier. I know trust is hard for you, but believe me: if you can trust one person, that person is me.

‘I know what you did for Leanne.’

‘Are you okay, Healy?’

‘I’m trying to rebuild my career,’ he went on, ‘I’m trying to do it right. I know you didn’t give me everything you had earlier on, and that’s fine. You’re being careful. You don’t know which side of the line I’m on now. I’d be exactly the same if I was in your position.’

Another pause, and then a sigh crackled down the line. He sounded so different: sad, beaten and ground down. No anger. No fight. No resentment. Just an acceptance, as if he’d looked in the mirror and didn’t like what came back.

‘Are you okay?’ I asked again.

‘Yeah.’

‘Do you want to talk about something?’

‘I haven’t got anyone else,’ he said.

‘What are you talking about?’

‘I haven’t got anyone I can turn to in the Met. If I show any weakness to Craw, she will start watching me, doubting me, seeing every tiny mistake I make as some kind of slippery slope. If I show it to Davidson, to the rest of them, they will tear me apart.’

Another pause. I didn’t interrupt.

‘So I only have you, Raker. And now I need your help.’

56

Healy was waiting in the shadows near Westminster Bridge, the glow of a cigarette between his lips. The October before, he’d been an ex-smoker, three months on from his last cigarette, but the whole time you could see him craving them. He nodded as I approached along the riverside. Next to him on the wall were two takeaway coffees.

‘Thanks for coming,’ he said quietly, handing me one.

‘Are you all right?’

He nodded, his eyes falling on my bruises. ‘You been in the wars?’

‘Yeah, something like that.’

‘What happened?’

‘I’ll tell you later.’ I looked at my watch: 11.30. ‘What’s going on?’

Healy stepped away from the station entrance and we shifted back further into the darkness. ‘It’s Wren who left the voicemail message on Drake’s mobile,’ Healy said.

‘Definitely?’

‘Confirmed now. Forensics did their thing. Got hold of some conversations he’d had with clients at work. The boss there has all telephone calls recorded, and keeps a year’s worth on file, in case the FSA come calling.’

He handed me a printout of a forensic report. Everyone had a different voice, a ‘voiceprint’, determined by the unique anatomy of their oral and nasal cavities, vocal cords, facial muscles, lips, palate, jaw, even teeth. Forensic techs had used ‘articulators’ – the individual way muscles are manipulated in speech – as a way to match the work calls that Sam had made to the voicemail message he’d left on Drake’s phone. As I scanned the rest of the report, I saw clearly how the Met had mobilized the troops now: forensics were working Sundays, the rest of the task force had been working all weekend, everyone focused on the evidence in front of them, and the man at the centre of it all: Sam Wren. Except maybe he wasn’t doing this on his own. Maybe he had company.

‘So why are we here?’ I asked.

‘You remember what we talked about before?’

‘On the phone?’

‘Yesterday, in the coffee shop.’

I studied him. ‘We talked about a lot of things.’

‘About the things that didn’t add up about this. Why a man who’d been so careful until now decided to leave a voicemail message on his victim’s phone.’

‘It says there in black and white that it’s Sam’s voice.’

‘It’s Wren,’ Healy said. ‘I’m not disputing that.’

‘So what’s this about?’

‘After dinner tonight, I went back into the station and watched a home movie of Wren we’d been given by his missus. It’s definitely him on the phone. I don’t need forensics to tell me that. I can hear it. But …’ He glanced at me and away again. ‘I don’t know.’

‘What?’

‘He sounds different.’

‘Different how?’

He studied me. ‘I don’t know,’ he said again.

‘Different how, Healy?’

He dropped his cigarette to the floor and crushed it under the toe of his boot. ‘I don’t know,’ he said again. ‘It wasn’t that he sounded stressed. Forensics would have picked up on any stress, that’s what they look for. It didn’t sound like he was being coerced or manipulated. It was more …’ He paused. ‘It was more that there was no emotion in his voice at all. Nothing. Just empty words.’

He paused for a moment, the cigarette packet in his hands. He started turning it between his fingers and then looked at me. ‘You want to find him, right?’

I nodded.

‘I want to find him too. We want to find him for our own reasons.’ He paused, studying me. We both understood what his reasons were – he wanted to prove people wrong, people he hated – but I got the sense he was trying to work out what mine might be. ‘I know it’s his voice on the phone,’ he continued, ‘I know he was the last person to call Drake, I know Erion’s number is on his work PC … but something still bothers me. I don’t know what it is. Maybe it’s just the things you were filling my head with, but it’s something. Thing is, I can’t tell anyone about it because it’s based on nothing. The evidence is there in plain sight – it’s there – and all I’m left with is this vague …’

‘Gut feeling.’

He looked at me. This is a murder investigation, not some carnival sideshow. Cases aren’t built on how you feel. This isn’t the fucking magic circle. He’d been hitting out at me as a defence mechanism. He didn’t want me bringing problems to the table because then he had to deal with them. Then he had to take them back to an SIO who was constantly watching him, and a group of men and women who were waiting for him to make a mistake. But the whole time he’d taken what I’d said and filed it away.